1. WJEC Eduqas GCSE (9-1) Geography
Sustainability

2. An investigation into sustainability
Your students need to investigate the concept of sustainability. How well might a community or place deal with change? Sustainability takes into account economic, social and environmental factors. These elements may be in the physical or human environment.
Economic
Social
Environmental

3. Conceptual approach: Sustainability
The same two fieldworks environments can be used each year. The task can be tweaked to focus on the set conceptual approach
Coastal environment
Analysing vulnerability of coastal communities to flood risk
Urban environment
Use of Egan’s wheel to analyse features such as security, transport, jobs and inclusiveness

4. Conceptual approach: Sustainability
The same environments can be used each year. The task can be tweaked to focus on the set conceptual approach
Rural environment
Investigate a villages sustainable initiatives.
Urban environment
Evaluate the sustainable management strategies

5. Sustainable Urban Living
Investigate a locations’ sustainable initiatives

6. Using Egan’s Wheel How sustainable are communities?
Egan’s Wheel could be used as a tool to evaluate sustainability in an area
Students could focus on particular aspects (e.g. transport and services)
One concept that you might consider when investigating sustainability is Egan’s wheel. Data could be collected from:
Traffic counts
Access to public transport
Access to services
Questionnaires to gauge the views of local people
Environmental Quality Surveys
Sensory fieldwork
Photographs/sketches of buildings – identifying sustainable features,

7. Sustainable living Sustainable Community Assessment
A Sustainable Community Assessment could be developed using elements from Egan’s Wheel.
Source: (Fieldwork through Enquiry, GA publication)

8. Egan’s Wheel How sustainable are communities?
Egan’s wheel could be used to investigate how sustainable a community is.
A questionnaire might be developed using the elements of Egan’s Wheel
A comparison could be made between two communities using a range of data collection techniques.
To what extent is Village X sustainable?

9. Using qualitative surveys to investigate sustainability
Street Tranquillity and Greenery

10. Using qualitative surveys to investigate sustainability
Participant Survey
Results from the observations could be compared to Egan’s Wheel.

11. Lickert survey Coastal environments
Using qualitative data to investigate sustainability
Lickert survey
Coastal environments
‘Coastal defences are sufficient’
 Strongly agree
 Agree
 Neutral
 Disagree
 Strongly disagree
Are management strategies in physical environments sustainable? How might they impact the environment, economy and society? What might be the positives and negatives?

12. Housing density and off street parking
Using other surveys to investigate sustainability
Housing density and off street parking

13. Questionnaires
Who knows an area best? Obviously it is the people who live, work and spend their lives there.
Questionnaires: could collect data about different aspects of sustainable living from different stakeholder groups e.g. views on community cohesion and involvement, inclusiveness, building design, safety, perception of crime / traffic / travel options pollution etc.;

14. Transport
Examine the timetables at a bus stop and mark the routes onto a base map of the area.
Transport index: create an index which combines the frequency, length and cost of public transport to the CBD / main shopping centre / hospital
Identify areas that are not served and measure the distance required to travel to the nearest service.

15. Other suggestions for using Egan’s Wheel might include primary or secondary sources:
Traffic counts
Access to public transport
Access to services
Questionnaires to gauge the views of local people
Environmental Quality Surveys
Sensory fieldwork
Photographs/sketches of buildings – identifying sustainable features

16. Sustainable retail Retail Sustainability Assessment
Retail Assessment Survey
Students could carry out a survey to assess how sustainable individual shops in a retail environment are.
A retail assessment survey is another type of qualitative survey that could be integrated into an enquiry.
Source: (Fieldwork through Enquiry, GA publication)

17. Physical environments: Investigating sustainable management
These defences are:
Effective  Ineffective
Safe  Dangerous
Clean  Dirty
Cheap  Expensive
Beautiful  Unattractive
Natural  Unnatural
 Demountable flood defences in Shrewsbury

18. How do we measure change in sustainability?
Google Street View provides a free source of images starting in about By re-photographing street scenes, students can investigate whether there is evidence of sustainable change.

19. Urban environments Coastal environments
The police.uk website allows you to search crime statistics for any area of the UK – either by postcode search, or you can define your own search area

20. Surveys: Indices or bi-polar scores to collect data about how key components (e.g. of the Egan Wheel) can be applied to a an area (or areas). Students could record evidence such as noise levels, traffic flow, travel options, quality of pavements/green spaces/ cycle routes, building design (as examples). They might combine such surveys with taking photos to illustrate the best and the worst examples of sustainable living;

21. Presenting data
Radar graphs can be used to show data collected from qualitative methods.
These could be more closely linked to the sequence in Egan’s Wheel.

22. Presenting data
Other methods to present Environmental Quality Surveys include Bi-Polar charts.

23. Presenting data
Wordles can show the data from questionnaries

24. Quality of life is traditionally difficult to define as it can mean different things to individuals. Despite this there are some common themes which permeate most definitions of quality of life.

26. Interpretation and conclusions
This is where pupils should begin to offer some likely explanation of their analysis.
This explanation should then be used to draw conclusion linked to the initial aims of the investigation.

27. Evaluation Evaluating your methods Evaluating your conclusions
True Value. The value that would be obtained in an ideal measurement
Accuracy. How close a measurement is to the true value
Evaluating your conclusions
A valid conclusion is supported by a reliable data set obtained by using a valid method and based on sound reasoning
Validity. The suitability of the method to answer the question that it was intending to answer
Reliability. This is the extent to which measurements are consistent.
Ensure the pupils know the key vocabulary from the specification.
Understanding key terms in the specification is really important for pupils.

28. Useful resources
There are a number of excellent publications that could be used to support the development of fieldwork. Click the images for links.
Thanks also to the Field Studies Council

29. Any questions? Contact GCSE Geography Subject Officer: Paul Evans
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